Ganguly and chaos prevail

As the in-form Dravid vacates the hot seat for the out-of-sorts Ganguly, one thing is confirmed: As was the case today, in the days to come whenever the skipper is announced, the suspense will linger. The issue is not if Ganguly is a better skipper than Dravid, but the fact that the selectors have to finally make their mind on it and stick to it.

Last month, before the tri-series, when Dravid was named the skipper for the Sri Lanka tri-series and Ganguly expected to play under him, there was this wishful thinking the debate was finally over.

A selector had even gone on record to say, ‘‘If Tendulkar can play under Ganguly, why can’t Ganguly play under Dravid?’’ There were even those who said that Ganguly’s place in both the ODIs and Test squads is not in doubt but his fickle form did not quite always make him an obvious choice for the final XI.

In case the selectors saw a Mike Brearley in Ganguly they should have made Dravid a temporary skipper. This would have made the issue less confusing.

The present scene is so touchy that even Greg Chappell has distanced himself from the ‘Ganguly or Dravid’ debate.

SK Nair had gone on record to say that Dravid will be on test during the Sri Lanka series — ‘‘a good performance would see the team management retaining him as the captain’’.

The team under Dravid did lose thrice to Sri Lanka but would it have done any better with Ganguly as the captain?

Would a seasoned-campaigner such as Anil Kumble — if playing under Ganguly — return better figures than his 10-0-64-0 in the final? Or, for that matter, would Sehwag have curbed his natural instincts if Ganguly, the skipper, was at the non-striker’s end?

The selectors and the Board Secretary maintained that the decision to pick Ganguly ahead of Dravid was unanimous.

Considering the dynamics and the three hours they took to decide, it cannot be as unanimous as they want us to believe.